Project Amazon-Bike

Glimpses for the Daily Newspaper of Great ABC

While most of the cicloturistas chooses routes that ally beautiful landscapes and good infrastructure to pedal, others prefer the less favorable places exactly to be faced of bicycle.
It is the adventurer's Dan Robson,que case your house it came back in São Bernardo do Campo in the last 10, after passing more than 70 days crossing the country of West to East for the precarious highway Transamazônica, from Rio Branco, in Acre, until the capital paraibana of João Pessoa.

Although the course among the two capitals is of approximately 4,5 thousand kilometers, the deviations and obstacles took the former-analyst of systems to have to pedal more than 6 thousand kilometers to arrive to the same destiny. That without speaking in the ascents and descents that the own adventurer qualifies as " uncommon ".

And what is worse: in rain time. " the last 21 days were inteirinhos under water. In that time, Transamazônica is practically impassable; very difficult to finish the trip ", it counts Dan Robson, that characterizes the route as beautiful and, at the same time frightening, since it is far away from any place where one can ask for help case it dirties some unexpected.

" Before beginning the course, I caught some information in the 54 Battalion of Jungle of the Amazonian, that guided me with relationship to the five worse problems of the area: the risk of contracting malaria, the terrible conditions of the highway in itself, the assaults, the conflicts among Indians and prospectors, and the animals as ounces and snakes. But the worst of everything is the malaria that can kill if it be not treated on time ".

As compensation the those difficulties and to the lack of help, Dan detaches the infinity of types of fruits that can be picked there same, well to the margin of the highway, as the mango, ìnga, cupuaçu, wild passion fruit and banana, among others. " Of hunger nobody dies in Transamazônica ".


Highway: On August 27, 1972, the government prepared a great solemnity in the middle of the amazon jungle, something that marked the history of the Country. In the morning of that day, the Presidente, the general Emílio Garrastazu Médici, would begin the connection of Brazil of the North to the Northeast, inaugurating Transamazônica. After 30 years, the highway continues the same practically. In some spaces, he/she becomes a trail in the middle of the forest. In other, the traffic is precarious. When it rains, the mud leaves hundreds of isolated people. And, even in the drought period, the dust and the holes turn the trip for the highway an endless drama.

Transamazônica was traced leaving Pernambuco and Paraíba. Then, it would go by Maranhão, Tocantins, Pará, Amazonas and it would arrive Big mouth of the Hope even, in the border of Acre with Peru. The intention was to tie the whole Country and to arrive to Oceano Pacific's ports, in a course of 8.100 kilometers.

With the highway, the government also intended to colonize all the Amazonian one and to guarantee the national sovereignty. But everything ended up not passing of a dream of the general Médici. Only a space tying Aguiarnópolis (TO) Lábrea (AM) it was built and, even so, the traffic just flows during a time of the year. Today, Transamazônica has 2.500 kilometers, little more than a room of the foreseen.
A Forgotten Highway to Integrate for not giving [to the foreigners].
Wrapped by that nationalist slogan, a legion of workers began, in October of 1970, to drop trees and to open road to build that that would be one of the more faraônicas and spoiled works of the Brazilian history: Rodovia Transamazônica's construction, or BR-230. In the military government's of the general peak Emílio Garrastazu Médici, the highway had been projected to integrate the Amazonian to the rest of the country.

They were foreseen about 5.600 km from Recife, in Pernambuco, and João Pessoa, in Paraíba, until the lower case and ignored Big mouth of the Hope, in Acre, already in the Peruvian border. The first space of 1.254 km tying the cities of Strait, in Goiás, Itaituba, in Pará, festivamente was inaugurated in September of 1972. Two years later, with less of the half of the concluded work, the machines stopped. An unprecedented devastation of leaving the horrified environmentalists, even in that time it was accomplished, with official guarantee, in the heart of the Amazonian.

Dust - I " Want to return to Maranhão, from where he/she should never have left ", he/she claims the farmer José Alves of Costa, 66 years old, one of the old residents of Itupiranga, city that was born because of the highway. Every day, he travels the highway in a bicycle, one of the most common means of transportation, as the motorcycles. " We go without difficulties by the mires and holes. Here in this highway the bug is ugly and has up to a hundred stopped " trucks. In the summer, the means of transportation of Costa can also be one of the most dangerous. " The drivers don't see us because of the dust, that copper everything ", explains to the farmer, he/she testifies of many deaths for atropelamento.Pelo less 250 kilometers of highway received asphalt.

The paving completes it is foreseen in the program it Advances Brazil, of the federal government, but many doubt that comes to happen. They were not made anything in 30 years, it won't be now, at government's end, that the personnel will put the hand in the mass ", the bus driver Raimundo of Oliveira Andrade says.